>>> DRIVERS:
>>> Drivers for cards now. Are those all open source, or does it require
>>> payment? Is the source released of all those cards drivers, and do
>>> they integrate into linux?
>>> You should get everything you need from the Linux kernel and / or OFED.
>> You can also find the drivers on the vendors sites. Not sure about the rest, but for the Mellanox case it is open source and free - both for Linux and Windows
>
I bought some Supermicro systems about a year ago (maybe new than that),
with newer Mellanox cards( Mellanox Technologies MT26418 [ConnectX VPI
PCIe 2.0 5GT/s - IB DDR / 10GigE). That aren't fully supported by the
OFED that comes with RHEL/CentOS, not even version 6.1, so I had to
download the latest Mellanox OFED to get them to work. I can confirm
Gilad's statement that you can download them for free, they are 100%
open source, and you don't need to be a paying customer or register on
the Mellanox site, or any of that BS.
Prentice